I am here on behalf of all the children...
The testimony below was shared at the United Nations as part of the World Day for Overcoming Poverty commemoration on October 17, 2010. We are sharing it again to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.My name is Verónica Jurado, I am a student of middle school. I am here on behalf of all the children and young people that help their parents to earn a living.My parents were born in Mexico and they came to the United States looking for better opportunities. They are hardworking; they work so that they can support us to pay our studies.When my father was a child he used to help his father to take care of the animals in the farm.
My grandma had a small grocery store and my mother used to help her.Both of my parents learnt to work when they were young. I have also learnt how to support my parents, as my parents did to their parents.I started to collect and recycle cans with my mother when I was in 5th grade. This was due to my father’s accident when I was in 4th grade. Because of the accident my father had to spend some time in hospital, he couldn’t work and we had all the hospital bills to pay. I saw my mum stressed.She had to start working. A friend proposed her to collect cans, she showed us which cans are accepted by the machines and which are not. She also showed us the area where to collect.Because of health problems my mother couldn’t carry heavy weights so I decided to help her.At the beginning I was embarrassed because a few friends live in the area where we collect cans. So I dressed up and if I saw them I pretended to do something else.My mother told me that I shouldn’t feel embarrassed of working; working is not embarrassing, stealing is.I hope other parents are conscious of this and are telling their children how proud they are because they are learning the value of working, of working hard.I am not embarrassed any more because collecting cans you make friends and because people say: “This is a good thing you are doing”. I know that by recycling we are helping the Earth, if we don’t do it, no one will and the Earth will become a mess.Since 2009 we bring the cans to a redemption center called Sure We Can.Sure We Can is a redemption center where you can bring your cans and you don’t have to wait. When you bring your bottles to the machine you have to wait in the line for hours and it only accepts a reduced number of cans. Sometimes the machine doesn’t work and you have to bring all the cans home.In Sure We Can; we fix you a place where you can organize your cans. There are other people there and you can find friends as I have had and that helps you and encourages you to keep recycling.In the streets you can also find people that help you, they keep the cans at home and they give them to you when they see you.I am not the only young person supporting her parents. A friend of mine helps her mother after school in the Laundromat where she works and another one in a grocery store.Collecting cans is not only a way of helping my family but a way to get money and save it to go to college. My dream for the future is to become a lawyer. I want to defend people in their rights. I can’t stand when someone is accused unfairly; I want to defend these people. But I also want to become a lawyer to give back to my parents something of what they have given to me, I want to help them to have an easier life.I will be the second person in my family to go to college. One of my stepbrothers attended university but because of the cost he couldn’t finish his studies. I hope I am able to go through all the years to become a lawyer.The school I go to is one of the best in Brooklyn; we chose it because in primary school my teachers advised me this middle school is a good one.I work very hard at school. I know that to become a lawyer I need to work very hard.